‘I did this to stop the peace process. We need to be coldhearted.’ — Yigal Amir

Brothers held: Police say the suspected assassin and his brother may have been part of a right-wing conspiracy.

FROM OUR NEWS SERVICES

‘I did this to stop the peace process. We need to be coldhearted.’ — Yigal Amir — The Atlanta Constitution, 7 November 1995 — The Atlanta Constitution · Atlanta, Georgia · 7 November 1995

Send this clipping to somebody

Transcribed from the clipping

Tel Aviv, Israel — The man who has confessed to assassinating Yitzhak Rabin told a judge Monday he made a “coldhearted” decision to kill the prime minister to stop the peace process. Police were investigating whether Yigal Amir and his older brother were part of a right-wing conspiracy. Magistrate Dan Arbel ordered Amir, 25, held for 15 days as the investigation continued.

His 27-year-old brother, Hagai, who admitted giving Amir 20 bullets of the type used to shoot Rabin, was ordered held for seven days. Unshaven and clad in the same clothes and skullcap he wore when he fired the fatal shots Saturday night, Amir told the judge he drew his ideas from the Halacha — the Jewish legal code. “According to the Halacha, you can kill the enemy,” he said.

“My whole life, I learned Halacha. When you kill in war, it is an act that is allowed.” In an even tone, Amir described the shooting. “I tried to get as close as I could,” he said. “The police jumped on me and hit the pistol,” causing him to hit Rabin’s bodyguard, too. The guard was slightly wounded. “I did this to stop the peace process. We need to be coldhearted.”

Did you act alone, Arbel asked? “It was God,” Amir replied. During a pause in his arraignment, Amir engaged in a heated exchange with Israeli reporters, expressing his hatred of Arabs.

“It’s interesting how an entire nation did not notice that the center of the Palestinian state is an army of terrorists that we will have to fight in less than half a year or a year,” said Amir, lecturing in an aggressive tone. “Everyone is shocked about the killing of a prime minister who groveled before all the countries of the world.

He is responsible for the security of only 98 percent of the population and did not care about the other 2 percent,” Amir said, a reference to the estimated 130,000 Jewish settlers. “Such a prime minister is not a prime minister for me.” Amir mentioned the peace rally where he had stalked his target: “It was 50 percent Arab. Did anyone cover it?

Did anyone report that there were 50 percent Arabs? These Arabs who will determine the future of my state? “If you are willing to let them determine the future of your state ... you are hypocrites. What will you do when there are 2 million Arabs in the country? You will give this country to the Arabs.”

How this transcription was made

Read from the scan by a machine looking at the image of the page, not by optical character recognition and not by a person. The clipping carries no masthead and no dated folio line, so the date recorded here could not be checked against anything printed on the page. Nothing on the page contradicts it.

Cite this clipping

"‘I did this to stop the peace process. We need to be coldhearted.’ — Yigal Amir," The Atlanta Constitution, 7 November 1995. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1995-014. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1995-014